Breaking News

On this Tuesday’s overnight, November 15th’s Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, I will be appearing to talk about Lake Monsters, Thunderbirds, Mothman, and Bigfoot. In three hours it’s easy to cover many cryptozoological subjects, and I look forward to people calling in to discuss anything they want. If you have any questions you want me to answer on air, leave them here in the comments section. I’ll work them into the show, or answer them next week, if C2C doesn’t get to them. Also on with me, via phone from NC, will be my old Fortean friend Mark [...]

In a comment to an earlier blog, delfin asks: “Would you please tell me if genetic analysis has been used for ‘identification’ of the hair brought by Slick and Hillary? If yes, what the results are? If no, why still not?” I’ve discussed this question, in depth, in Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology, but here’s a summary and a few other thoughts. The Hillary hair samples from 1960 were mostly from only one of the Buddhist monasteries they visited, the Khumjung Lamasery. The famed supposed Yeti scalp from this Buddhist monastery was brought back to Paris and Chicago [...]

Shelly Williams, 49, the world-renowned primatologist credited with gathering convincing evidence of a new species of great apes, a cryptid primate known to cryptozoologists as the Bili or Bondo ape, was shot in the back around 2:30 pm, on November 7, 2005. She apparently was the innocent victim of an unrelated drug shooting in Smyrna, Georgia. Williams remained in critical condition in intensive care at Atlanta Medical Center. The bullet, which passed through her spinal cord, grazed the nerve before glancing off her liver and lodging in her diaphragm. While police have some leads, no arrests had been made. The [...]

Boing Boing ("A Directory of Wonderful Things"), being one of my favorite blogs and especially those by David Pescovitz, was the first on the block, to understand the mixture in modern technoculture and cryptozoology. Now over at PopPolitics ("Where Politics and Popular Cultures Meet"), they are talking about cryptozoology too. Blogger Bernie in his "One Culture’s Myth …" is carrying on a good exchange, as he comes closer to understanding what we are all about. Here’s part of what I wrote today in PopPolitics comments section about the current cryptozoology converstation there: Hi, Bernie. You ask if it isn’t "true [...]

The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained was founded by Ivan T. Sanderson. Sanderson created the society to further his research interests and writings of Forteana, from Abominable Snowmen reports to out-of-place objects. SITU’s journal was Pursuit, and the editor from 1980 onward was Bob Warth. I’ve been informed, indirectly from his wife, via former SITU member Bob Durant that Warth died on Halloween, October 31, 2005. Bob Warth died from a hemorrhage secondary to undiagnosed colon cancer. Warth was a long-time supporter of Fortean thought, and counted among his many friends, old line SITUers, as well as individuals [...]

Ancient Chinese Mongolians tell of monsters in Lake Kanasi. Twenty years ago, the first modern wave of sightings of the Lake Kanasi Monster occurred. Today, this Chinese cryptid is well known throughout Asia, and rapidly gaining recognition in the West. Reporter Audra Ang, writing in a breaking Associated Press dispatch, notes: "They have come by the tens of thousands over the years — skeptical scientists, curious tourists — answering the lure of the mysterious Kanasi Huguai, China’s very own version of the Loch Ness Monster….In today’s society, myth-making and chasing are a big business." Ang reflects on this recent trend: [...]

Richard Greenwell, who just passed away, reportedly had planned to write a book on cryptozoology, but never did. Few knew that he had co-edited two books. His first was Nutrition, Food, and Man: An Interdisciplinary Perspective by Paul B. Pearson and J. Richard Greenwell (ed), Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980. The second reflected his interest in ufology, which came before his cryptozoology involvement. It was Sightings: UFOs and the Limits of Science by Ronald Story and J. Richard Greenwell (ed.), NY: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1981, and London: New English Library. A paperbound version was published as well, [...]

An important figure in formalizing the organizational structure and tenets of cryptozoology, Richard Greenwell, 1942-2005, has died. J. Richard Greenwell, 63, cofounder of the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC), died Tuesday night, November 1, 2005, shortly before 8 p.m. of cancer. He passed quickly and peacefully while surrounded by family in his home in Tucson, Arizona. On January 8-9, 1982, Greenwell, at the suggestion of Jerome Clark, along with Dr. George Zug at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C. and Dr. Roy Mackal at the University of Chicago, embarked on the creation of the first formal scientific organization for [...]

I flew to New York, and I just flew back. "Fox & Friends" had been promoting that they were going to talk about Bigfoot this morning and I was the guest. They were showing footage of the Patterson-Gimlin film (I sure hope they paid Mrs. Patterson the user fee for this tease). They put the makeup on me (ugh) so my nose won’t shine. They sent me from the first Green Room to the second one, closer to the studio. I had my Yeti hair, reproduction of the 1967 filmsite footprint, and my Gigantopithecus blacki skull as my on-camera props, [...]

In a breaking news story out of Australia, a Talangi researcher named Bernie Mace (who told the media there that he’s been researching mystery cat reports for thirty years), is quoted as having a new theory. Mace earlier had said the black cat that Melbourne deer hunter Kurt Engel shot in June 2005 was a melanistic puma. Black pumas are unverified in North and South America, let alone in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other reported areas, such as Germany, where they have been sighted. A mystery felids, a black catlike cryptid, nevertheless, is frequently encountered in areas of unknown [...]